Tim Green - False Convictions

“And?” Casey asked.

“The whole thing was a Ponzi scheme,” Marty said. “The shares were worthless. The thing went belly-up. Everyone lost their jobs and when it was over, all the lawyers around said it was no wonder they didn’t use local lawyers or accountants. They didn’t want anyone to know what was really going on. Like Jake said, people talk.”

“And Graham had your law office do some tax work?” Jake said.

“Maybe because we’re a safe distance from Rochester and Buffalo,” Marty said.

“Where his partners are,” Casey said.

“To catch wind of his scheme,” Jake said.

“What scheme, though?” Marty asked.

“That’s what we have to find out,” Casey said.

“And those tax records might be the key,” Marty said.

“Where are they, Marty?” Jake asked.

“That’s a problem.”

MARTY’S UNCLE’S house sat back off the road on the better side of town, an enormous three-story Tudor surrounded by a stone wall capped with decorative iron spikes. Casey peered through the bars of the gates at the house’s outline as they rolled slowly past. They’d left Marty’s Volvo outside his apartment and rode together now in Jake’s Cadillac.

“How the hell do we get in there?” Jake asked.

“Every Sunday growing up,” Marty said. “Turn there.”

Jake turned at the corner and followed the side street adjacent to the mansion.

“We’d have dinner at Uncle Christopher and Aunt Dee’s,” Marty said from the backseat. “My cousin Ruth, she’d take us out back and smoke cigarettes. There’s an old door in the wall behind the garden with a lock that must be a hundred years old. You can open it with a tire iron.”

“You think this is Mission Impossible?” Casey asked.

“It’s my uncle’s place,” Marty said.

“You just got fired,” Casey said.

“I’m good with it if he is,” Jake said, pulling over in the deep shadows of the trees overhanging the street. “I’ll go, too.”

“Listen to yourselves,” Casey said. “What are you going to do, break a window?”

“My uncle calls it the men’s room,” Marty says. “There’s a mahogany bar, a pool table, darts, a poker table. He’s even got a walk-in humidor and a wine cellar. There’s an office down there, too. Big leather chairs and books. That’s where he keeps the safe. There’s some steps back by the garage. He keeps a key in the light fixture.”

“And then you blow the safe?” Casey said. “Or are you a safecracker, too?”

Marty blinked at her from the gloom of the backseat. “I know the combination.”

“And you’re sure that’s where records are?” Casey asked.

“I’m the one who put them there.”

Casey nodded. “And you two won’t mind if I stay on the sidelines for this? I’ve got enough charges pending against me.”

“We got it,” Jake said. “Although the prison stripes would suit you.”

“Up yours, Jake.”

The two of them disappeared, leaving Casey alone in the dark. Jake popped the trunk and she watched them jimmy the lock on the metal door, Jake forcing it open with his shoulder. After a few minutes, Casey got out and started up the sidewalk, using a stick she found to scratch the stone wall. When she reached the corner of the uncle’s property, she saw a car slowing down on the street to turn into the gates.

Heart pounding, she tucked herself behind a forsythia bush, its bloom a dull gold in the haze of the streetlight. The headlights blinded her as the car swung into the drive, idling almost silently as it waited for the gates to open. With a grinding shriek, the heavy metal bars began to part. Atop the corner posts, two bronze carriage lamps glowed yellow, and when Casey pushed through the fringe of the forsythia, she could clearly make out Ralph’s face sitting behind the wheel of the pewter Lexus.

The gates clanged and Ralph disappeared through them.

Casey whipped out her phone and dialed Jake, praying he’d answer.

AS JAKE’S PHONE rang on the other end of the line, Casey sprinted down along the wall toward the garden gate. It was still ajar. When she got Jake’s voice mail, she tried Marty, peering into the garden and its own smaller wall with an arched entryway on the opposite side. The smell of tomato vines and dirt filled her nostrils. Marty didn’t answer his phone, either, and she stepped inside, moving slowly down a slate path between two rows of zucchinis. Something gurgled and hissed, and she jumped back, searching the darkness until she could make out the foggy mist of a sprinkler.

Beyond the garden wall and through the trees, she could see part of the mansion’s roofline and a smattering of lighted windows. Before she reached the stone arch, Casey heard shouts from the direction of the house. She stepped out of the garden as two figures dashed her way across a broad lawn. A second shout came from behind them, and three orange tongues of flame licked at the darkness, the thundering crash of gunshots hurting her ears. As she turned to run, Casey felt-as much as she heard-the thud of bullets striking the garden wall within her reach.

She stumbled and felt Jake’s hand snatch up her arm, dragging her toward the gate. On the sidewalk, Marty shot past them with a heavy cardboard filer thicker than a phone book under his other arm. They all piled into the car and hadn’t closed the doors before Jake stamped on the gas and they shot down the street.

“Are you kidding me?” Casey said, twisting around to watch out the back window. “That son of a bitch shot at us.”

“We thought we were going to get away clean,” Jake said, breathing hard and checking the rearview mirror. “They went in when we were sneaking out. We heard them shouting at each other after they opened the safe, and that’s when we just took off.”

“That Ralph,” Marty said, glancing over his shoulder as if he expected to see the old soldier chasing them down the street on foot. “Metal leg didn’t do much to slow him down.”

“He shot at us,” Casey said, again.

Jake hit a turn that tossed Casey into his lap. She straightened and pointed at the filer Marty clutched to his chest. “You got it?”

Marty nodded and undid the clasp, reaching into the filer and pulling a heavy ream of paper partway out. “Now we got to dig through it all.”

“Good thing you’re a CPA,” Casey said.

Jake nodded and continued to drive fast, checking the mirror constantly.

“Where we going?” Marty asked from the back.

“It’s your town,” Jake said. “I’m just driving. I figured you’d tell me. Someplace where they can’t find us. Preferably something with bulletproof walls.”

“He almost killed us,” Casey said.

“You keep saying that,” Jake said.

“I keep saying he shot at us.”

“Right.”

“I still can’t believe this.”

“Well, we know one thing,” Jake said.

“What?”

“Whatever’s in there is worth killing for.”

JAKE PULLED the car around in back of the Bright Star Motel. Casey waited with Marty until Jake returned with three metal keys on plastic diamond-shaped fobs. Marty helped Casey with her bags while Jake held the filer and the door. Casey set her bag down on the sagging bed and looked around and sniffed at the mold.

“Reminds me of a place we went one time in Galveston when I was a kid,” she said.

Jake moved a rickety round table up to the bed, placing two chairs around it, and served the filer up in the middle as if it were a meal for them to share. Casey sat on the bed. Marty and Jake took the chairs. They stared at the filer for a moment before Casey undid the band that held it shut and removed the contents, serving them out equally.